UNITED NATIONS, July 10,2020 -- Increasing insecurity in June has upped the number of people forced from their homes in Burkina Faso to 921,000, making it one of the fastest-growing displacement crises in the world, a UN spokesman said on Wednesday.
"Increasing insecurity has also made humanitarian access more difficult," said Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
The land-locked country on the southern fringe of the Sahel in West Africa has been suffering from Jihadist attacks.
The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that all the country's 13 regions have now suffered from the attacks, with 90 percent of the displaced living in host communities.
Food insecurity has also increased, and market disruptions will further affect areas hard hit by insecurity and displacement, OCHA said.
"The temporary suspension of schools has impacted 5.1 million children, in a context where more than half of primary and lower secondary school age children were already out of school," the humanitarian office said.
Some 2.9 million people impacted need humanitarian assistance in the country, compared to 2.2 million in January, OCHA said.
The revised UN Humanitarian Response Plan now seeks 424 million U.S. dollars - about a third more than originally planned. But Dujarric said only 22.8 percent is funded so far.
|